Working longer means staying healthy longer

It is rare for anything of great relevance to occupational health and safety to come from the annual budget statement of the Australian government. There is nothing directly relevant from the statement issued earlier this week except for the lifting of the retirement age to 67 in 2023.

Compulsory retirement age does not mean that people stop working. If that was the case, farming and the Courts would be very different organisations. The retirement age has more to do with financial independence or the pension eligibility than anything else but the government’s decision has focused the media and commentators on the fact that people will be working beyond traditional retirement age.

The announcement this week also supported the reality that has been increasing for many people for over a year now that the level of retirement income has plummeted because of the global economic recession. People have a growing financial need to work, not simply a desire.

This will change the way that worker health will be managed by companies and by the individual. Watch for even more interest in “the best companies to work for” campaigns. In fact it should not be long before someone starts marketing on the theme of “is your health up to working into your seventies?”

This morning a package of interesting statistics were presented to a breakfast seminar held by Douglas Workplace & Litigation Lawyers. One of the regular speakers, Ira Galushkin, provided the following Australian statistics

High risk employees (5+ Risks) are at work but not productive 32.7% of the time compared to low risk employees (0-2 Risks) who are not productive 14.5% of the time.

The productivity difference between health and unhealthy employees is therefore 18.2% or 45 days per annum.

Healthy employees average 1-2 sick days per annum versus 18 days for those in the lowest health and wellbeing category.

The unhealthiest employees are productive for only about 49 hours out of each month compared to around 140 hours/month for the most healthy.

Poor health can account for an average 5% loss in productivity across the entire Australian workforce with the unhealthiest group reporting a 13% drop in productivity. About half [of] this is related to chronic conditions such as headaches, hay fever and neck/back pain,whilst half can be accounted for by lifestyle factors such as inactivity, smoking, obesity etc

All of this information shows the importance of workers maintaining their own fitness in order to live longer, but also to be able to present a case, if necessary, about their own productivity levels and how they have been saving their employer big dollars.

If we need to be able to work till older than previously, we will want to stay in a job we enjoy and that values us. Some longterm health planning may be required by all of us.